The present invention generally relates to agricultural equipment and methods and more particularly to an improved method and apparatus for inverting agricultural crop material windrows while maintaining the windrow""s cohesive integrity.
It is common knowledge to agricultural producers that it is necessary to dry crop material that has been cut before it can be baled or similarly harvested. It is also known that agricultural material rarely dries evenly when it is placed in windrows. The sun can quickly dry the top portion of a windrow resulting in a very uneven moisture content of the agricultural material in the windrow from top to bottom. Various attempts have been made to manipulate a windrow of agricultural material, the lower portion of which is relatively wet. Known windrow inverters or turning apparatus also displace the windrow laterally which aids in the drying process because it often moves the agricultural material from the wet ground to dry ground.
As is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,738,092, a windrow inverter has a pull hitch that is connected to a tractor, with the inverter having a lift mechanism that lifts the hay of the windrow from the ground and drops it onto a transverse conveyor belt as the apparatus moves along the windrow. The transverse conveyor belt moves the hay laterally, and then deposits it on a shelf that has a chute which redirect it forwardly and then drops it to the ground. In this inverter, however, there is no mechanism associated with the shelf and chute which positively moves the hay through the chute, so that a bottleneck effect can result at the end of the transverse conveyor means. Since the movement of the hay through the chute is caused by the hay being deposited by the transverse conveyor means, i.e., new hay pushes the deposited hay through the chute, this can generally cause the hay to be fluffed and piled up, which tends to damage the cohesiveness or structural integrity of the windrow. This in turn can result in leaves being separated and the hay being more susceptible to wind loss under windy conditions.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved agricultural material windrow inverting method and apparatus that reliably inverts the windrow without damaging the structural integrity of the windrow.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such an improved agricultural material windrow inverting method and apparatus which reliably inverts the agricultural material windrow in a manner which minimizes rough handling that can result in a significant loss of material from the windrow and makes the windrow susceptible to further material loss due to windy conditions.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide such an improved agricultural material windrow inverting method and apparatus that lifts, turns, inverts and drops the windrow while maintaining continuous structural cohesiveness of the windrow to prevent fluffing of the agricultural material so that the repositioned windrow has a low susceptibility to material loss caused by windy conditions.